VIRGINIA
BEACH
-- Melvin
Bowers
doesn't
have any
computers.
Not a
single
one. But
that
doesn't
keep him
from
worrying.

It doesn't
matter, he
explains.
When the
Y2K bug hits, the cities won't be
safe. The banks will freeze accounts.
The stores will run out of food. And
the resulting mess will turn the cities
into a bloody tangle of riots and
looting as hordes of urbanites scratch
and claw and shoot each other for
the last of the bottled water and toilet
paper.

That, he says, is why he's holed up in
a faded yellow trailer on the edge of
a Back Bay swamp, a place of weeds
and cattails and not much else.

Because when all those countless
billions of computer chips roll over
on New Year's Eve and have to
decide whether it's 1900 or 2000,
Melvin doesn't want to be anywhere
near the crowds.

``It was like the Holy Spirit got in me
real bad,'' he says, fixing a pair of
visitors with a serious stare.

``It's like I had to go.''

For the past few months, Melvin
Bowers has been at his hideaway
with a trailer full of canned goods
and a head full of Jesus.

He's collecting rainwater from a
gutter on his shed. He's storing the
barrels in the nearby pines. On a tiny
plot next to his trailer, he's growing
pinto beans.

Melvin wouldn't be in Norfolk come
New Year's Eve for a million bucks.
No way, no how. He and his purified
water and his generator will be right
here, enduring whatever trials the
Lord sees fit to throw his way.

And if it all turns out to be nothing?

Hey, that's fine. He'll give the stuff
away to a church.

Still, he wonders, what if it doesn't?

Melvin is preparing for
TEOTWAWKI.

It's not the name of a lost American
Indian tribe. It stands for The End Of
The World As We Know It. The
Y2K crowd talks about this
possibility so much, they came up
with an abbreviation.

Melvin Bowers, in other words, is
not alone.

There are plenty of other people who
share his views. Many of the ones
predisposed to believing in the more
apocalyptic scenarios have a
distinctly religious bent.

Melvin has been helping to bring
them together.

A couple of times now, he has shed
his cut-off sweats for his three-piece
suit and made the trek from the
Carolina line to the Holiday Inn
Executive Center on Greenwich
Road in Virginia Beach.

He's involved with The Prophecy
Club, a Topeka, Kan.-based outfit,
the stated mission of which is to
``study and research Bible
prophecy.'' Its newsletter is
dominated with offers for books and
videotapes with titles such as ``New
World Order Mind Control,''
``Technology and the Mark of the
Beast'' and ``Judgment Day 2000.''

On a recent Friday at the Holiday
Inn, Melvin introduces a crowd of
about 40 folks to Rick Vannelli, a
Prophecy Club speaker and
self-described Y2K expert.

``It may be the catalyst for the end
times, folks,'' Vannelli tells those in
the crowd, who paid $7 a head to
hear his three-hour talk. ``We don't
know for sure. There's only one man
who knows for sure. And when He's
coming, we'll all know for sure.''

The folks here are inclined to believe
Vannelli. Everyone in the room,
almost to a person, responds with a
hearty ``AMEN.''

Ted Woosley, a preacher from rural
Zuni, was one of the folks who
showed up for Vannelli's talk.

Outside the conference room, he
explains his take on the Y2K bug,
which revolves around a translation
of the biblical passage that describes
the creation of the Earth in six days.

The
Bible,
he says,
actually
meant
for each
day to
translate
into
1,000
years.
So six
days
means
6,000
years.
To
Woosley,
it's
clear: Our time is coming up.

``The 6,000 years of human history,
of human government, is coming to
an end, man. January 1 is going to be
the beginning of a whole lot of
problems. We're preaching to
whoever will listen. Not everybody's
coming to the Lord, though.

``The Book of Daniel,'' Woosley
says. ``It's all right here.''

Inside, Vannelli is going strong in
front of the overhead projector.

He's hitting hard for a few minutes
on the media conspiracy he says is
hiding the truth about Y2K. A
reference to ``CNN -- The Clinton
News Network'' draws hearty laughs
and even an ``amen'' from the mostly
white, mostly middle-aged crowd.

``About 80 percent'' of government
sources, he claims, ``have no idea
what's going on out there.''

The Prophecy Club newsletter says
Vannelli ``reads five newspapers a
day,'' which qualifies him to
``provide the very latest accurate,
unopinionated and detailed facts.''

Before his talk, Vannelli said he
based his information -- and the book
and videotapes he's selling -- on
``just research, 24 hours a day.''

Before he took a job as a paid
Prophecy Club speaker, he said, he
worked in the construction business
in Ohio.

As a preacher, Woosley advises his
flock on how to prepare for Y2K
problems.

Melvin Bowers isn't much different
from anybody else in and around
Pungo. He's just a good ol' boy from
Tennessee who joined the Navy as a
young squirt because he wanted to
get out and see a bit of the world. He
put in 20 years, and then got a job
mowing the golf courses at the Navy
base.

It was in 1997 that he first started
worrying about Y2K. Read about it
in the newspaper, he says. Then he
started cruising the AM dial, listening
to Prophecy Club speakers and
tuning into folks such as UFO
broadcaster Art Bell. Then came
some news about asteroids and more
news about hurricanes, that 1999
was supposed to be worse than
normal.

It wasn't long before he quit his job
as an assistant greenskeeper and
moved to the middle of nowhere.

Melvin doesn't own anything with
any of those pesky ``embedded
chips'' that could go haywire. His
aging blue Ford Escort is probably
too old to contain any of the
computer parts that run most modern
engines these days.

It would be way too easy to paint
Melvin as a nut case. He knows this.
He knows how out there all of this
sounds. Quitting his job, moving to
the edge of a swamp, going out of his
way to spread the word about the
Lord and Y2K to anyone who will
listen.

Melvin has the same information
most everybody else has. More,
probably.

It's just the way he's decided to react
to this information that sets him
apart.

Saw the article--it ran on the front page along with a picture of Mr Bowers. Nothing personal, but the picture of Mr Bowers shows him as a long-haired, hippy-looking person and from the camera angle he looks like a wild man. I'm sure the camera angle was intentional so that there is a subliminal message sent to the reader that y2k preparers are slightly off-center. It really made me angry. So much for the "impartial" media..... Kitty in VA

Another slap in the face for y2k preparedness al-la Time Magazine.
They could have just as easily phrased the statement

There are plenty of other people who share his views. Many of the
ones predisposed to believing in the more
apocalyptic scenarios have a distinctly religious bent.

with

Many of the ones predisposed to believing in the more
apocalyptic scenarios have a keen understanding of technology and
the potential of systemic failure as the world's infrastructure
is being pushed to its limits.

But words like that would go over the heads of 99% of their
readership.

When there are food shortages and the power goes out it'll be Melvins
fault. Thats the way "they" are starting to set the whole thing up
as. Crazy doomers, self fulfilling prophecy- just another reason to
keep your preps to yourself and your mouth shut!